


Amorra Week- Day 5: Scars

by Raven_Hallowryn



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Amorra Week, F/M, Family, Romance, Scars, amorra - Freeform, winter 2012
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-30
Updated: 2013-04-30
Packaged: 2017-12-10 00:58:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/779952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raven_Hallowryn/pseuds/Raven_Hallowryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One-shot for the fifth prompt of Amorra Week (Winter Edition 2012).<br/>A little playful ambush ends in a game of scars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Amorra Week- Day 5: Scars

I wake up with a gasp, shaky, sweating and slightly dazed. I have been dreaming of the past, of things that I really wish were no more than a nightmare, it’s been seventeen years and I still can’t get it out of my head, it’s been over a decade and a half and it still haunts my dreams.

Her soft snores pull me out of my half-dreaming state and I turn to face her… Goodness, she’s so beautiful.

Even after all these years it’s still fascinating and surreal to wake up by her side, to watch the way her hair tangles around her in waves of chestnut, how her brows pinch slightly and her full lips part with hints of drool in the corner making her look endearing, vulnerable and a little lost but most of all making her seem oh so young and mesmerizingly pretty… To think that I spent so long despising her is to remember how I wasted my youth with hatred when I could have been protecting this woman with all my heart.

A creak alerts of me of somebody’s presence as the door to our room opens ever so slightly in the gloomy half-light of dawn, the motion is slow and almost completely silent. I know who it is, they are at it again so I’ll just pretend to still be asleep for now.

“RAAAAWR!” I hear the playful demanding cry even before I feel the sudden weight pouncing over my body. I catch my attacker quickly and pull the second one to me before it can tackle the suddenly alert and confused Korra.

“Ah! Huh…? What…?” My wife looks absolutely adorable, looking around with heavy eyes, a lost scowl and hair sticking out in awkward angles.

“Ah….No fair! I wanted to get mommy!” The boy I pulled to my arms is kicking and struggling as much as he can to try and grab at Korra, this eight year old bundle of energy scowls with a face that looks almost eerily alike the Avatar’s.

“You little rascals! It’s barely dawn!” Korra snaps and yawns half amused and half upset as she drags the boy into her arms.

“Did we scare you? Did we?” The other boy, the one who tackled me in the first place, is now bouncing on my lap excitedly with that face that is the exact copy of his brother’s lighting up with joy.

“You scared the living daylights out of me.” I reply with a grin, ruffling the child’s chestnut hair playfully. They never manage to catch me and only occasionally succeed in tricking Korra but my little pranksters always look so happy when their plans succeed so I can’t help but lie.

The twins squeal at my reply and literally jump all over us both wearing identical grey slacks and maroon tunics, it’s fairly obvious that sleep time is over and as much as I know this will leave Korra grumpy, I still believe that is the best way to wake up. Even my horrid dreams are long gone, chased away by the laughter of the boys that Korra is now attempting to tickle senseless as punishment.

A new noise by the door makes me look towards it and I see a sleepy twelve year old girl rubbing her eyes as she stares into the room, wearing her simple lilac sleeping tunic with dark coffee colored hair looking disheveled and sticking out of her loopy twin braids as she drags an indigo blanket behind her.

“What’s happening…?” She murmurs with a sleepy pasty voice.

“Did we wake you, Nilak?” I ask my eldest daughter with a tender smile, as much as I love my boys it’s this little one that is pride and joy and the twins know that but they really don’t mind, they worship their big sister completely.

“Nilaaaaaaaaaaaak!” One of the boys, I’m not sure whether it’s Tokkala or Korei since they look too much alike, runs right into his sister, forcing her to hug him just to avoid toppling over. “We scared mommy and daddy.”

“You did?” Nilak smiles still sleepy but looks up at me skeptically with those lovely pale eyes of hers- she’s a sharp girl.

“Oh yes, they certainly did.” I think I might have been a little too sarcastic but the boys didn’t seem to notice and Nilak always appreciates my humor.

My son drags his big sister to our bed and they jump right onto me, it’s a mess of elbows, kicks and heavy squealing bodies but to me it’s paradise.

“Mommy, what’s this?” My other son is poking at Korra’s ribs, it’s Korei I think given that he’s doing that little finger tapping thing he often does unconsciously.

“Huh?” Korra looks down. She’s wearing only baby-blue undergarments, the skimpy new kind that has become popular in Republic City in the recent years, rather the typical Water Tribe wrappings she used to wear in the old days; she has no shame around the children and is always comfortable with her body which is still athletically toned and beautiful despite all the minor scars and the natural roundness afforded to her from two pregnancies. The sight of her delectable body still makes my blood boil but at the same time it makes me all the more self-conscious about the wrinkles and grey hairs that I have, being so much older than my powerful wife.

“This.” Korei insists, jabbing slightly at her ribs and making Korra squirm ticklishly as she examines the clean oblique scar he is poking, one that has begun to fade in recent years.

“It’s a scar, honey.” My wife replies with a distant sad smile.

“Well DUH!” My son rolls his eyes exhibiting the sass he inherited from his mother. “I want to know what made it.”

Korra gives me a hesitant glance before she looks down at our son again, her pause was enough to get the other boy interested too and soon they are both eyeing her expectantly.

“It was an ice spike.” Korra replies vaguely.

“But how?” Tokkala put in this time, he’s draped over my lap but looking up at his mother.

“I was in a fight with a strong waterbender. It was long before you were born.” Korra looks somewhat nostalgically sad but she hides it well behind her proud grin.

“Was it dad?” Nilak surprises us by asking the question quite seriously.

“Nope, it was uncle Tarrlok actually.” Her reply makes all the children sit up and stare.

We don’t usually speak about Tarrlok in this house, not since… Well, not since he died a couple of years ago. My brother survived the boat explosion that he himself caused, at the last possible second I realized I just couldn’t let him end our story so easily, not because of my own desires but because I couldn’t stand the thought of destroying my little brother that way, not after all the pain I had already caused him. I had to bloodbend him out of the boat and protect myself with waterbending as the entire vessel exploded into a flaming inferno but somehow we both lived to tell the tale; however, while I bear many scars I still manage to live a normal life nowadays while trying to make amends but Tarrlok, although redeemed, was too damaged, his scars ran too deeply both physically and emotionally and they were a constant reminder of how I had failed him but I never would have imagined that after all the years he spent recovering, after all the smiles and games he graced my children with, that he would take his own life. It hurt me deeply to know that I had been so immersed in my own familiar happiness that I had overlooked the inner agony Tarrlok had been in and that was exactly why Korra and children avoided speaking my brother’s name around the house these days… Then again perhaps if they spoke more about him it wouldn’t hurt so much whenever he is casually mentioned.

“Why were you fighting with uncle Tarrlok?” Korei tilts his head, asking the question curiously. The twins can read the atmosphere in the room but, like their mother, they are too clueless to know when to be silent.

“Well, it’s a long story.” Korra tried to smile and pointed at another scar that had almost disappeared from her cinnamon right shoulder. “This one was from then too.”

“Was it because uncle Tarrlok was a bad guy back then? From when he was councilor?” Nilak asks unable to restrain her curiosity.

Tarrlok himself had been the one to share the stories of when he had been a villain, craving for power that had gone to his head, in those stories he always made me out to be some sort of supernatural antihero too while painting Korra with almost divine heroism that bordered on adoration; the children had been fascinated by those stories and I was glad that they had learned the truth so young but it always made me wonder if my disfigured little brother might have had deeper feelings for my wife.

“Yeah, that was exactly it.” Korra nods in confirmation and plops down unto the bed again, lying on her stomach. Korei promptly crawls over his mother, straddling her waist and petting her back, he knows she likes it so he does it to gain her favor. The twins are very attached to their mother, it is ironic really since they haven’t displayed a shred of bending ability so far and therefor spend more time studying with me than training with her.

“What about this one?” Korei prods at a particularly nasty scar on Korra’s right shoulder blade that seems to spider along the skin like a webbing of little burns.

“A fight with Lighting Bolt Zolt.” I reply rather bitterly. I had warned Korra not to restore that man’s bending but she ignored me as always since she made no distinction when returning people’s skills. In the end it had been a bad idea because a few weeks later, during a gang riot, that very man had wounded Korra so severely that she had to be hospitalized.

“Did you kick his ass, mommy?” Tokkala asks excitedly.

“Oi! What kind of language is that?” I flick my son’s nose in admonishment.

“Sorry.” He sulks before looking at Korra again. “Well, did you?”

“Nah, uncle Mako and uncle Bolin were the ones who wailed on him to get even for this.” Korra points vaguely over her shoulder. She conveniently forgets to tell them that Mako and Bolin had only actively sought revenge before I could because they knew I would kill the man if I got my hands on him, luckily Mako is a police officer and managed to put Zolt behind bars for a long time.

“And this?” Korei pokes at a scar on Korra’s lower back, it’s not really very noticeable and appears to be more of a discolored gash. I also remember that injury, though this one holds nostalgia rather than resentment.

“Pro-Bending injury. Right during the championship finals the year before you boys were born.” Korra grins smugly with the same nostalgia I’m experiencing.

“Did you win?” Korei leans clumsily forward to look at his mother’s face as he keeps tracing her back.

“Of course! That was our third year in a row.” Korra looks proud of herself, the taste of that victory had blurred out the memory of the painful recovery from the wound and the forced three year retirement from Pro-Bending.

“What about this one?” Tokkala stretches out to poke at Korra’s left hip were a jagged discolored set of scars still makes a stark contrast with her dark skin.

“Attacked by a Panrilla during a mission in the Fire Nation.” Korra yawns slightly, still a bit sleepy but since it’s her day off she seems to be enjoying this little game with the children.

“How did that happen?” Nilak was the curious one again.

“Your mother and your uncle Bolin thought that Panrilla cubs were cute to play with. Turns out Panrilla mommies are not as nice.” I reply with plenty of disapproval in my voice.

“Well they really were cute…” Korra mumbles in her own defense.

“Did you fight the Panrilla?” Tokkala’s eyes were almost shinning with excitement.

“No, it caught me by surprise. Aunty Asami was the one that saved me, actually.” Korra chuckles at the memory but her words ring true in one point that I have noticed over the years- she’s reckless and brash, she jumps into battles and senseless bouts easily but she is also powerful and the scars on her body are either result of highly skilled opponents or due to her own distraction because when she really focuses on a fight it is damn well near impossible to get a strong enough hit on her to leave a mark.

“Wow….Really?” Tokkala seems amazed. “But you’re the Avatar! Why do you need people to keep saving you? You can do anything!”

“Honey, no amount of power can replace friends…or love.” She adds the last words with a soft glance at me. “Even the Avatar needs a posse, you know? And I happen to have the best one in the whole wide world.” Korra smirks smugly again. “And it includes all of you too.”

“Speaking of which, there’s also this mark right here.” I point at the back of Korra’s thigh were two half-moon scars decorate her caramel skin.

“Don’t even bring that up.” Korra is laughing now and the boys are curious.

“What is it?” Korei twists his body awkwardly to look at the strange mark.

“That was Nilak.” I explain with a playful grin.

“How?” Tokkala seems curious and Nilak looks up at the ceiling with her dark cheeks turning a rosy red.

“When she was little she liked to bite things and she once threw a tantrum and bit mommy so hard that it left that mark.” I elaborate while beckoning at the scar. “She really didn’t want to let go, I had to practically pry her off by force.”

The twins stare at their sister with renewed respect but before they can ask any questions Korra is stretching out her hand to poke at my upper arm.

“And then she did the same to daddy’s arm and I had to smack her little butt until she let go.” Korra chuckles but Nilak doesn’t appear to be amused and keeps looking away with shame.

“Can we see?” Tokkala is already lifting my arm to look for the mark but he doesn’t seem to be able to find it. I am only wearing sleeping pants so it should be easy to find such a unique mark but I know why he can’t detect it- my left arm that he is examining is almost completely scarred over, hiding any other marks, along with my entire back, my left ear, hip, side and thigh, the left side of my jaw and my neck. Such marks are the result of the explosion that nearly took my life and Tarrlok’s but while for most people the sight of my marred flesh is disturbing, for my children it is nothing new and not even remotely intimidating.

“Can’t find it?” I asked, amused by his scowl as he continues to search.

“Nuh-uh.” Tokkala shakes his head.

“I guess the burn scars hide Nilak’s teeth marks well.” I chuckle as my daughter pouts.

“Yeah, well, if it’s scars your daddy here is the champion for sure.” Korra blurts out with no ill-will, I know she isn’t bothered by my appearance in the least.

“Daddy, is it true?” Tokkala looks at me with distress. “What uncle Tarrlok said about this being his fault.” The boy pats my scarred arm and I have to suppress a sigh at the anxious expressions all the children wear, only Korra seems impassive as she watches my reaction.

“It wasn’t his fault, if anything it was mine for pushing him too far. But that’s a grown-up problem, you shouldn’t have to worry about it.” I know someday I will have to try and explain this to them and I can only hope that they will understand it, they probably only saw Tarrlok’s stories as stories but someday I will have to make them see the truth in those tales and I just want them to learn from my mistakes. However, now is not the time to corrupt their innocence with such darkness.

“Does it still hurt?” Tokkala pokes at my scarred jaw and I grin softly.

“Not in the way you think.”

“What does that mean?” Tokkala makes a face, annoyed at my cryptic reply, he really is just like his mother and so is Korei for that matter.

“It means that sometimes the scars inside keep hurting long after the ones on the outside have healed.” I think I have just confused my sons further.

“What dad is saying…” Nilak comes to my rescue, finally looking at me with hesitation. “Is that some scars can’t be seen on the skin, some wounds are in your heart and mind in the form of memories and they hurt more than these marks.” She points at my marred skin and I am impressed by her insight.

“I don’t get it.” Tokkala huffs and crosses his arms.

“Look at it this way…” Korra appears to be thinking of an example. “What would be worse? You and Korei fighting and hurting each other or you and Korei being separated forever?”

“Separated.” Both boys reply immediately without a second thought.

“Exactly. And what would hurt more?” Korra continues, looking right at Tokkala. “If Korei punched you or if he said he hated you?”

“…I would rather be punched.” Tokkala looks panicked at his brother as if seeking some kind of confirmation that he is not actually hated and as usual Korei reads his twin like a book and jumps off Korra’s back to hug him.

“That’s what the wounds on the inside are, sweety.” Korra finishes her explanation and rolls to her side again, propping her head on her hand as she watches us all.

“Do those ever stop hurting?” Korei is the one asking this time but both twins look up at me expectantly.

“I don’t know yet, boys. But there are things that make it feel better, things that make it all worth it.” I reply simply but I am still considering their words, so far none of the inner scars of my past have stopped paining me but time certainly has made them bearable along with the happiness that I have today, even though I still don’t think I deserve it.

“Like what?” They ask in unison.

“For me?” I watch them nod and smile while tracing their cheeks with my thumbs. “For me it’s your mother and Nilak and both of you. It’s your love and your smiles that make it all worth it.”

“Seriously?” Tokkala sounds skeptical.

“You’re just saying that! It can’t be that easy.” Korei pouts a little.

“It’s not easy at all but it’s the greatest thing in the whole world to me.” I chuckle at their naïve skepticism but answer with honesty and to my surprise Nilak leans into my arms and I instinctively wrap an arm around her shoulders to hug her close.

“I don’t get it.” The boys speak together once one more.

“Someday you’ll understand, boys.” Korra pats their heads and leans over them to kiss me. “You mean the world to me too, Noatak.” She murmurs into my lips in reply to my statement.

I kiss her back sweetly and watch the twins cling a little jealously to her. I react by grabbing them all and pulling them all closer to me, Korra smiles at my side as the boys tumble onto our laps and once again I feel like I’m dreaming, like this world is too good to be true for someone as unworthy and as scarred as me… But I crave it and cling to it, I will never let go of my wife and my family even if I have to endure a thousand more scars for them.


End file.
